‘Catch-up’ game costs Supercats

GEELONG Supercats coach Leon O’Neill admits he takes a part of the blame for his side’s 97-88 loss to the Ballarat Miners on Saturday night.

O’Neill lamented the lack of spread of game time across the board as the Miners dominated a 10-minute period of the game, leaving the Supercats to “play catch-up basketball.”

“There was a 10-minute period — five minutes before half time and five minutes after half time — that really set the game up for Ballarat,” O’Neill said.

“I probably wasn’t proactive enough to recognise a few J.Davis 33 points, D.Gatlin 16, M.Luxford 12 changes that we needed to make and I’m still trying to get my head around the new team that we’ve got. My performance on the bench and a few mental errors from the boys — there’s a nine-point deficit right there.”

DeMarcus Gatlin and Michael Luxford again played their roles on the court and recruit John Davis followed up his superb start to the season with 33 points and 15 rebounds. However, it was the 38 minutes of game time that concerned O’Neill the most.

“John (Davis) was outstanding once again, I think he only missed four shots for the night and had 15 rebounds,” O’Neill said.

“But he played 38 minutes, which is too high for us. Both DeMarcus (Gatlin) and Nathan (Herbert) were in the 30s as well. We’re not a team that needs to play five or six guys for 35 minutes to get the job done. We need to spread the minutes around and try to make sure the starting guys are in the mid-to-high 20s. Looking at the minutes the guys played and looking at the film again, there were some tired boys on the floor, especially leading up to half-time.”

The Supercats go on the road next weekend where they will face North West Tasmania and Hobart, giving them the chance to win five out of their first six games before their second home game in Geelong the following weekend.

“If we go down there and at least split the road trip or if we’re lucky enough to come back with two wins, then we’ll be feeling pretty good about ourselves,” O’Neill said.

“We have to go to school a little bit about what we did Saturday night. There’s a few minor things that we need to address and if we can do that then I think we will go back to our best.”